Tuesday, March 22, 2011

I am a fan of the idea of a good walkabout, especially, in relation to art; it's easy to get drawn into a pat set of rules and do the same things over and over again until they get tired, but it's important to step back and look at what you liked about art to begin with. Maybe that's a little deep. Maybe that's your thing. Either way, it means I spend some time looking at things that attract me visually as an artist, whether it's a beautiful bird, a star constellation, a muddy puddle or maybe some abstract art. It freshens the proverbial slate and provides a new landscape of inspiration from which to draw.

Since I have recently done one acrylic piece, I suddenly have an urge to do many, many watercolor works. I believe the appeal is that they are fast; the effects that I enjoy the most come from a little skill and a little understanding about letting the dye/watercolors do what they want (a never-ending process of learning). I am still quite happy with using Dr. Martins even if it means they might have a tendency to fade quickly. Unfortunately, selling originals won't work very well, but I'll be happy to keep a print for display and hide the original in a safe, light-free place.

Here's one I did this weekend. I was aiming for a mysterious description of the dress by way of watercolor puddles, but the dress's skirt isn't as well defined as I would like.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

I finally got around to finishing a painting that has been sitting on my shelf for a long time. The sketch was actually posted here about a year ago and was left to sit around in the creative recesses of my mind until half a year ago I started it and then tonight finished it. Well, as finished as anything ever is! I may go back and try to make some darker areas on the figure in order push out lighter areas, but at this point I'm concerned about overworking it.

And here is a fun wet into wet watercolor I started in an intermediate stage. The "final" is shown at the very bottom.

This was meant to be a warm up; sometimes I need to muck about with no real goal in mind to get myself into the mood to actually paint between the lines for something else. Unfortunately, the picture below does not do it justice as it was executed in Dr. Martin's Concentrated Watercolors and is extremely luminous in person. I painted wet into wet and then used a blow dryer between the red and blue layers. After that things got a little crazy and very puddle like. The ringed effect was created by the rapid drying of the blow dryer. I quite like it.